Only two of the 202 clubs that make up the top two divisions in the top five European leagues still don’t know what it’s like to win a league this season. One of them is the German Greuther Fürth, who are in their second year in the Bundesliga. The other, the Levant. This Saturday (2pm, Movistar LaLiga), the frog team will be the last rival to step on Cornellà-El Prat in 2021. It does so as a leather, immersed in a serious crisis of results. Last week marked the longest streak of unbeaten matches in the history of the League: the 24 games of Sporting in the 1997-98 season. Not winning at RCDE Stadium will mean breaking that negative record.
The white-and-blue stadium, however, does not even want to hear about the possibility of Espanyol becoming an aspirin team again for a rival in need of points. A condition that has accompanied the Spaniards in recent years, and which was repeated on October 31 at the Getafe field, at that time last classified. Those of Vicente Moreno are once again in no man’s land, an indefinite scenario that the parish knows perfectly. The team has just returned from Second, but the fans are not satisfied with the permanence and ask to fight for higher goals. To achieve this, Espanyol cannot miss points against the teams in the lower zone. The visit of the East is a key appointment for the Catalans, who will close the year facing three outings in the fields of Palencia Cristo Atlético, in the Cup, and Celta and Valencia in the League.
Third change on a rival bench
Levante, who fired their sporting director a few weeks ago, will be the third team that Espanyol will face this season shortly after a change of coach. The previous two were reinforced by the visit of the Spaniards. The first was Getafe, who defeated the white-and-blues three weeks after joining Quique Sánchez Flores. The second was Barça, who debuted Xavi on the bench with a narrow victory in the Barcelona derby (1-0).
The Levante released last week its third coach of this course, Alessio Lisci. After debuting with a 0-8 Cup in the field of CD Huracán Melilla and scratching a point against Osasuna, the frog team has ratified this week this young coach, who at only 36 years old wants to make a place in professional football despite not having experience on a high level bench.
His journey to the elite has not been easy. As a player, Lisci reached Serie D (the fourth category of Italian football) at the hands of Guidonia, but almost always played in the Promozione (Sixth Division). He soon trained to start coaching lower-level teams. He started at Lazio, but soon after tried his luck by sending 20 cards to the clubs of the League offering to practice his home football. Atlético and Levante responded, which was finally incorporated in 2011.
For the first two years, in order to survive, he combined this work with that of a food seller in different Italian restaurants in Valencia. The paths of Lisci and Llevant were temporarily separated when the club ceased Miguel Ángel Villafaina, coach of the youth A whose right hand was the Italian. Lisci returned to Italy, but the frog team recaptured him shortly afterwards, and offered him the position of head of youth B. Since then, he has been building his path as head coach. In 2021 he started directing the youth team, and will close it with the difficult challenge of saving the first team, which will look for its first victory in a field where this year only one visitor has won, Atlético de Madrid.
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